Jake Grimsley

Duke Summary - What to Teach

The chapter starts off by stating how being proficient in setting goals is essential for good

musicianship. What kind of goals should you set for each session? Course objectives usually

include the acquisition and refinement of knowledge, skills (both intellectual and physical), as

well as attitudes. There are a couple different types of knowledge. “Declarative Knowledge” is

basically knowing things. “Procedural Knowledge” is knowing how to do things. It’s easy to

show declarative knowledge. It’s harder to describe (in words) procedural knowledge. In music

performance instruction, if you express a goal as “play the etude in Lesson 17,” you’re really

limiting what you’re trying to achieve, and you may end up focusing both your student and

yourself on getting through the music, instead of performing it well. You lose sight of how the

etude is played. The long term goal of developing musicianship isn’t “to play the etude” or “to

play the etude beautifully,” it’s really “to play beautifully.” Your goals as an educator should go

beyond “what” and go to “how.” The most important goals are far-reaching, not narrowly

defined. The ultimate goal of instruction is not to solve certain equations (in math, for example),

but to use what you know about solving equations to solve other problems that you may or may

not have encountered before. In music, the real goal isn’t learning to play any specific piece; the

real goal is for students to become superb musicians. Expertise isn’t based on content, but on

skills. And skills require consistent, deliberate practice over time. You can’t just look up skills

on the internet. What are the components of musicianship? What skills must good musicians

demonstrate? Having a good playing position, or playing a good note all require a number of

small things that you probably don’t even think about, but together, they make a good

position. You have to build composite skills, bringing together a lot of small things to play

beautifully. As a teacher, you need to understand the various components of a skill, so you can
 Jake Grimsley

identify it and correct it in order to help the student achieve the final goal, which should be

beautiful playing. The individual skills of good musicianship all start with actually doing

something. As a teacher, you must be able to identify what the student needs to do to achieve the

final goal. There was also a large chart in the chapter detailing the component skills of

intelligent musicianship, skills novice and expert players must have, while the expert players

may be able to do it automatically without thinking about it.